Your outrageously outrageous story du jour, via The Blaze:
Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson. It happened last month in an intermediate Spanish class at Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas — a city located about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Wearing red, white and green, students had to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class. That didn’t go over well with sophomore Brenda Brinsdon. The 15-year-old sat down and refused to participate. She also caught it all on video:
If you want to skip ahead, the flag salute starts around 1:30, and the anthem signing kicks off at the 3:00 mark. Confession: I'm not particularly bothered by any of this. The events transpired in a Spanish class right around Mexican independence day, and the school district's foreign language curriculum calls for "knowledge and understanding" of other cultures. When the "whistleblower" student's family objected to this portion of the lesson, she was given an alternative assignment. Compared to the genuinely inappropriate spectacles that play out in public schools across the country, this row just doesn't raise my ire. In fact, it seems pretty harmless. Am I missing something?
In case you were curious, here are the words to the Mexican flag salute:
Bandera de México,
Legado de Nuestros Héroes,
Símbolo de la Unidad
de nuestros Padres
y de nuestros Hermanos.
Te prometemos:
Ser siempre fieles
a los principios de
la libertad y la justicia,
que hacen de Nuestra
Patria la Nación
Independiente, humana
y generosa a la que
entregamos nuestra
existencia.
A rough English translation:
Mexican flag
legacy from our heroes
symbol of the unity of our ancestors
and our brothers
We promise you:
To be always loyal
to the principles of freedom and justice
that makes this an independent,
human and generous nation ,
to which we dedicate our existence.
No mention of God, so at least it's probably ACLU-approved.
UPDATE: Tina Korbe presents a possible compromise:
If the point is to memorize and recite a passage in Spanish (it was a Spanish class, after all), recite a translation of the U.S. pledge. That’s what we did in my Spanish 3 class in high school and it stuck with me: Juro fidelidad a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America y a la república que simboliza, una nación, bajo Dios, indivisible con libertad y justicia para todos.
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